SO YOU'VE WRITTEN A BOOK

Congratulations! Welcome to the club.

Some things you should know:

1. It's a lot of work. Seriously, it's more work than you think it is. You thought it was hard finishing your manuscript? Cultivating a career means shepherding a novel across the rocky, barren terrain of total obscurity, across the jagged ridges of massive public indifference and into the lush green meadows of generous and abundant royalty checks.

Even if you have written a fantastic piece of fiction, it will languish undiscovered unless you unleash a ferocious uphill campaign to get it noticed. And even that is only the beginning; now you have to translate robust sales into an ongoing job — the kind of job that pays the rent, buys the groceries, gets you health insurance, puts gas in your car, and makes the payments on your dining room furniture. How many people get to make a living as writers? How many people try? Don't think about it too hard, or you'll start crying. Again. Just hunker down and focus. And it helps to have some kind of useful skill, like being a clapper loader or doctor.

You can easily spend eight hours a day writing, another eight hours a day marketing and promoting your work, and the other eight hours networking and answering email. (Then you have to find time to replace your toner cartridge, sleep, feed the cat, and binge-watch Season 2 of Game of Thrones.)

2. People will hate your work. Maybe it will be a few arrogant, hateful trolls. Maybe it will be a large number of people. Maybe it will be most people. But there is one absolute certainty: no matter how proud of it you are, someone will despise what you've written.

Consider the greatest works of literature from history. Pick any example. It's not at all hard to find passionate, articulate criticism by very smart people patiently explaining why it totally sucks donkey balls.

Now consider books that are extremely popular and successful in today's market — books that have sold millions of copies and been made into major motion pictures. Again, pick any example. A very quick Google search will yield pages and pages of people howling and snarling about how gut-wrenchingly, teeth-grindingly, eye-gougingly terrible it is.

That's what you're jumping into, so pull on your galoshes. Don't take it personally. That's a stupid thing to say. Of course you're going to take it personally. If you don't already have a drinking habit, now might be a good time to develop one.

3. You may think that writing a book is a fairly unusual occupation, and it is. I have no idea what percentage of the human population has (a) seriously considered writing a book, (b) actually started writing a book, (c) actually finished a manuscript, or (d) goodness gracious — actually published a book, but a few logical assumptions tells us that it's probably a fairly low figure. (It gets even lower when you filter out of the equation those who "wrote" a "book" using stolen permanent markers to write in all caps on the backs of paper placemats from seafood restaurants. And it gets far, far lower when you also remove from consideration those who call their work a "manifesto," as well as anyone who creates incoherent erotica involving pets and kitchen appliances.)

But once you enter the strange world of publishing, it will suddenly seem as if every single human being on the planet has written a book or is writing a book. You will find yourself surrounded by people who casually mention how disappointed they are that their sixteenth novel didn't make it quite as high up on the New York Times Bestseller List as their fifteenth. You will not be a special snowflake, Captain Authorpants. But this is a good thing, once you get over the initial shock. You are surrounded by a group of people who are going through what you're going through, and who understand the challenges, setbacks, insecurities, triumphs and absurdities of this peculiar business.

Some people are jerks, and writers are people, so you will encounter some who are by nature competitive and a few who are even bullies. The tactic for dealing with them is the same for dealing with any other toxic dickwad: to the extent possible, ignore them. Most of the writers I've ever met are basically nice people, eager to share and sympathize.

In reality, novelists are not competing against each other, even if they're writing in the same genre. Why? Because avid readers are always looking for more books, new books, different books, other books. It's a false fear that "she will buy HIS book instead of MY book!" If she likes the kind of stuff you write, she'll buy your book, too. The real enemy of writers — all writers — is a society that doesn't value reading. The other writer is not your opponent. The other writer is your ally against a much greater and more threatening nemesis: a world where kids grow up without ever being exposed to books and without ever being taught to love reading.

4. If you are brand new to the scene, more established, more successful writers have every reason to be cautious about you. You might be one of those annoying ramoras who try to latch on to famous or wealthy or powerful or popular people and get a free elevator ride to glory and prosperity.

So be sincere in your compliments, "Like" their pages, follow their blogs, signal boost their latest releases, give favorable reviews to their work, but don't expect or demand anything in return. Your work will ultimately succeed or fail on its own merits.

Someday, maybe YOU will be an established, successful writer. You will then find yourself bombarded with attention from eager young writers who are trying to get started with their careers and are hoping you can give them a lift. The same advice applies.

5. A lot of writers are introverts, so parties for writers can be really strange affairs.

6. It's totally OK to be friends with writers whose work you aren't into, and vice versa. Maybe they write romantic vampire novels set in 18th-century Budapest and you write courtroom thrillers. It's fine. You share a common love of writing and a common experience navigating the world of writing for a living, and that's more than enough.

7. Get a good agent. Better yet, marry one.